


Painkillers for a werewolf

by laheysmythes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Thiam Week, injuries, it addresses Liam's IED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 12:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12254649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laheysmythes/pseuds/laheysmythes
Summary: It took a broken arm and several painkillers for Theo to learn several things that day:1) Liam had temporarily lost his powers2) Liam had IED and3) Theo cared more for Liam than he let on.





	Painkillers for a werewolf

**Author's Note:**

> I literally had no time whatsoever to write this, but yet picked writing over sleeping. Oh well.

Liam woke up feeling weirdly different. He couldn’t quite place what was happening to him, but he felt tired. No, not only tired, but he felt like he had been run over by a truck, and that feeling hadn’t happened since years ago… back when he was human.

He jumped into a seating position on his bed, first thing he did was examine his own hands as if they would give him an answer as to why he was feeling particularly off that day. He was getting irritated too, and he prepared for his claws to come out like they always do, but nothing. No claws, no yellow glowing eyes, just the frustration.

He groaned as he pulled off the covers to go look into the mirror. His body looked normal, everything looked normal, so why didn’t he feel normal?

Liam had made enough noise that he had managed to wake Theo up. Groaning, he looked up from where he was lying in his bed to stare at the beta, who was still looking at his own body in a weird way. Theo frowned.

“What the hell are you doing now-” Theo glanced at the clock, it read 6:05 am. “-this early in the morning, you don’t even have school for another two more hours.”

“I think I lost my werewolf powers,” Liam confusedly said, still not sure of it but was beginning to believe that it was the most logical explanation. He heard a sarcastic laugh coming from the other side of the room.

“Liam, you cannot just wake up one day and lose your powers. It’s impossible,” Theo rolled his eyes because _of course_ Liam had to be dramatic over impossible things at the crack of dawn.

“You don’t believe me?” Liam asked, offended but not surprised.

“What’s there to believe, you seem normal to me, with the exception that you’re currently spitting conspiracy theories over losing your powers-” Theo didn’t have enough time to react and stop Liam, who had put his arm in between the door and the outside and had closed the door hard enough that he heard a bone crack.

“Son of a- OW! GODDAMN IT, UGH!” Liam yelled in pain, slipping to the floor, lying there holding his right arm in pain.

“What the hell did you just do,” Theo pulled off his covers and tried to get to the other side of the room to help Liam out, but he didn’t get there as fast as Mrs. Geyer, who had just entered the room abruptly, clearly horrified by the screams plus seeing Liam in pain on the floor.

“Liam! Honey, what did you do!” she knelt down to check Liam’s arm, and he winced in pain, tears rolling down his cheeks. Theo just stood back, watching the scene from a considerable distance.

“It hurts so badly!” Liam managed to say through the pain, his mom clearly getting more preoccupied by the minute.

“What happened?!” she turned to Theo looking for an answer, and the older boy shrugged.

“I don’t know, one minute he was up doing some noise, next thing I know he slammed the door on his arm,” Theo said, not being of much help to the situation. Liam managed to shoot him a glare even in his state.

“Why am I not healing!” Liam angrily said, and his mom shook her head.

“You broke your arm Liam, of course you are not healing!” Mrs. Geyer said with exasperation in her voice, not really understanding what Liam meant. “Is your IED acting up again? Are you even taking your pills?”

“NO! Mom…” Liam weakly said trying to shush her but to no avail.

“You’re gonna take your pills right after we get back from the hospital- NO BUT! You’re gonna do it,” Mrs. Geyer helped him up to a standing position, picking up a hoodie for possible use after they came back from the hospital.

Theo had been standing there the whole time witnessing the exchange. _IED?_

Clearly he had said the term out loud, because he earned back yet another threatening glare from Liam, and a response from Mrs. Geyer.

“He has IED, intermittent explosive disorder, didn’t he tell you?” Liam protested against his mom sharing more information with Theo, but it was too late.

“No, he didn’t tell me,” Theo said, lost in his thoughts as he watched Mrs. Geyer help Liam out of the room so they could leave to the hospital.

\---

After he had eaten some cereal for breakfast, Theo grabbed Liam’s laptop and did some research. First, he searched for myths on how werewolves could lose their powers, which didn’t turn out with many results. It’s not like the rest of the world believed werewolves were real in the first place, and even if they did, losing your abilities was really unheard of. The only thing that seemed to constantly pop up was some kind of poison that could affect a werewolf temporarily, limiting him of his powers, especially healing.

Giving up on that search, he decided to look up some information on IED. He hadn’t heard about that before, but once he began reading, several things about Liam’s anger and lack of control started to make more sense.

He closed the laptop and decided to go to Deaton’s clinic and see if he could at least manage to find out how to solve Liam’s lack of werewolf powers.

\---

He came back a few hours later. Deaton had managed to come up with an answer, but it took time and research. Turns out that the day before when they had been fighting some amateur hunter in the woods, Liam got injured with an arrow, but he had healed so neither one of them paid much attention to it. The arrow didn’t seem to have wolfsbane in it, so they thought they were in the clear.

After Deaton examined the arrow (which had been left in Theo’s truck, despite his complaints of _‘throw that bloody arrow away, I don’t need blood stains on my carpets!’_ to which Liam didn’t listen apparently) he found that it had been laced with a new kind of poison that could disable werewolf powers, healing especially, for two or three days at most, leaving the werewolves weak enough to the point where the hunters could kill them easily with just an arrow.

Theo entered the house and there was Liam with a cast on his injured arm, sitting on the couch in the living room while the television was playing some kind of history documentary. However, something about him felt off. Liam looked tired, and calmer than usual. He figured it must’ve been the painkillers they had him on for the pain.

_Wow, painkillers._ Theo had gone most of his life now without ever taking one in a long time, since he didn’t need them thanks to fast healing and the fact that they had little to no effect on a werewolf. He was silently thankful for having the healing abilities he was given for once.

He went to the kitchen and made himself a sandwich, and afterwards he went back to the living room and sat on the other couch where Liam wasn’t sitting. He quietly observed Liam for a while as he ate his food. Usually when he did so, within a minute Liam would turn to look at him and flip him off or ask him _‘what are you looking at?!’_

But there was no response this time. No snarky comment, no profanities being thrown at him. It had been over ten minutes and Liam was staring somewhat idly at the screen, the only sound he had made was a deep sigh. Theo frowned.

“You took the entire bottle of painkillers or what?” Theo teased, expecting a snarky remark from Liam, but all he got was silence.

“Mason said you haven’t even answered any of his texts. He was worried enough that he had to call me to ask if you were okay,” he tried again, but still not a single answer came from Liam’s mouth.

“Okay, enough. Cut the bullshit-” Theo started after a couple of more minutes in silence and was cut off by Liam talking.

“I don’t wanna talk to you,” Liam said, voice hoarsely from not speaking in hours.

“Any reason in particular?” He was met with silence once again. “Look, it’s not my fault you decided to go and slam your door against your arm so you could break it-”

“I don’t wanna talk to you because you’re just gonna mock me or treat me differently like everyone else does because of-” Liam started but stopped talking mid-sentence. He didn’t really need to say more for Theo to understand what he was talking about.

“Okay, fair. I might be an asshole,” Theo started, standing up and moving to the other couch to sit next to Liam. “But I’m not gonna mock you because you have IED. And most certainly, I’m not going to treat you different because of it.”

Liam looked up from the TV screen to stare at Theo. He couldn’t exactly pick up emotions or listen to heartbeats right now, but Liam felt that the chimera seemed sincere.

“They all did. Back at Devenford, I, uh… I wrecked the coach’s car because he took me off the lacrosse team for having a few red cards. Well, several red cards. But uh, I got diagnosed afterwards and it… it just wasn’t the same. People either were scared of me, others mocked me because of it, mainly my ex-lacrosse teammates. Others looked at me like they felt sorry for me,” Liam vented his feelings out, remaining calm at all times, but still he looked upset.

“When I got turned into a werewolf, it got worse. It’s like my anger was heightened somehow, and the pills… I used to not take them because they made me weak and tired to play lacrosse. But when I turned, I tried to take them to calm down but they had no effect on me anymore. Must’ve been the werewolf healing acting up so I wouldn’t get tired.”

“That’s why you never said anything,” it wasn’t a question, it was an affirmation. Theo had this look of understanding in his face. He couldn’t exactly begin to understand how Liam felt, but he understood why he was the way he was sometimes. Closed off, defensive… the assholes from his old school really had done a number on him.

“I just figured you’d be like the rest of them. Even when I told Scott he got overly worried, and Stiles just kept making fun of the situation, so I figured you’d just join them, and I didn’t want to. You’re the only one that somewhat treats me like I’m normal, and you won’t hesitate like the rest of them on calling me out on my bullshit,” Liam scratched at his cast, not really want to look the other boy in the eye.

“Look, I won’t treat you any different, I promise,” Theo began to carefully say, trying to pick the right words because he didn’t want to screw up the situation. “But if you do… want to talk about it, if you ever wanna rant, I’m here.”

These were uncharted waters for both of them. Their ‘friendship’ had consisted of mostly fighting and insulting each other, while also fighting against others while in sync. They hadn’t really had one of those talks where they share any feelings or personal stories, Liam had Mason for that and Theo… well he preferred to keep to himself.

But he had seen Liam, had analyzed how he reacted most times, it didn’t shock him and it didn’t scare him to learn any of this. Actually, he had been helping Liam stay in control, and that’s something he had been doing even before he knew all of this. It wasn’t gonna change. If anything, it had helped Theo understand him more, and have even more - he’d kill himself if he said it out loud but - _admiration_ for the beta. Because despite his struggles, he managed to pull through everything.

“Thanks,” Liam softly said, now looking up from his cast to look at Theo. Despite the outburst, he felt more relaxed in Theo’s company now. It was something completely different from his previous interactions with the chimera, but he liked this. He could get used to this.

“However, what I am going to mock you about is your dumbass decision to break your arm to prove a point. Werewolf powers or not, who does that?” Theo began saying as he watched Liam groan in annoyance, and all of a sudden it felt like they went back to their old routine.

“Oh my god, can't you just make fun of me tomorrow or something? Between the painkillers and the other pills I’m too tired,” Liam let his head rest against the couch, closing his eyes.

“Fine, I’ll get back to you on two days after your powers come back,” Theo muttered and Liam raised his head, suddenly interested.

“Come again?” Liam said, he barely heard what Theo said except for ‘powers’ and ‘back’.

“Deaton said your powers should be back in two or three days at most. You’re not going to lose them forever,” Theo replied nonchalantly.

“Human for two more days… I can manage,” Liam said and Theo snorted from his place on the couch, earning a glare from the younger boy.

They stayed like that for the rest of the evening, both watching the same documentary that was playing on the History channel. A couple hours later, Liam fell asleep on the couch and he looked peaceful in a way, although his face looked a bit pained.

Theo put his hand on Liam’s arm and watched as black lines started to crawl up his own arm. He didn’t think Liam would be in such amount of pain but yet here they were. He took Liam’s pain some more until the other boy’s expression relaxed. By the time he was done, Theo had a few tears forming in his eyes and threatening to come out, all because of the pain he had taken.

Caring, it wasn’t an easy thing, but Theo was working on it. Screw the painkillers, they had nothing on him. Although it’s not like he would tell Liam that the reason he was feeling better once he woke up was because he took his pain, no. Maybe someday, though, he will.

**Author's Note:**

> Couple of things: 
> 
> When I read the prompt for the first day of thiam week it kinda popped up in my brain of how the writers never adressed Liam's IED again on the show, like they just said so in s4 but then nothing exactly other than Liam's anger. So I kinda thought on this, how would Theo react and support Liam when he found out about it.
> 
> I apologize in advance if there's some mistakes in the writing, I tried to do research on it and wrote with what I gathered and also from what Liam had said on the show on how his experience had been. Mostly I was quoting him off.
> 
> Also just to clarify, Liam didn't break his arm because of an IED episode, but because he wanted actual proof that he still had his werewolf powers and at the moment breaking his arm seemed like the most reasonable thing to do since y'know, he thought he'd heal.
> 
> Anyways hope you didn't cry much and I'll see if I can write something else for this week! Take care,  
> -Alejandra


End file.
